Cold Pulp Trio

by E.R. White, Jr.

  *****

  They took me to the local hospital, put ten stitches to close the cut on my arm, bandaged it up, then took me to the police department and locked me in a windowless room. I told my story to the Police Chief, and he got up and left. I sat in there for a couple of hours and thought about what had happened. I 'd just figured it out when the door opened and in walked Everett Buchanan with the Chief.

  The cop spoke. “Mr. Dafoe, you're free to go. We found blood stains in the late Mrs. Laumer's bedroom and in the backseat of her Lincoln. We also found a bloody blanket in her car trunk. You can pick up your things, including your sidearm, at the front desk. Leave an address and number where we can contact you if we need to.”

  I mumbled a “thanks” the Chief then stared at Buchanan a second. He just gave me a weary smile and said, “I'll take you to my office. We can settle there. I took the liberty and had your car parked there so you can go home as soon as we finish business.”

  We rode together in his car, neither one of us saying a word. He pulled into the parking lot, walked to his building and made his way to his private office. I followed him in and sat down into one of his office leather chairs.

  Buchanan opened a cabinet door, pulled out some scotch and offered me a drink. I took it. He poured one for himself and settled in the chair next to mine.

  I asked him point blank, “Why didn't you go to the police and tell them Sarah Laumer killed the Wilson girl. You knew it all along.”

  He just stared into his drink.

  “You steered me perfectly. You made sure I noticed the jewelry piece; noted how expensive it was; made it a point that Samantha Wilson did a lot of work for Laumer. All just so I would go in and maybe push a button on the Laumer bitch to make her crack.”

  He looked up at me and just arched an eyebrow. He looked tired, and his eyes were jaundiced looking.

  “Sarah Laumer told me before she killed herself that ‘a man’ sent me to see her. She said this man was going to help Samantha. She was talking about you. I think I know why. I just need to hear it from you.”

  He took a sip of his scotch, seemed to slump into the chair, looked up at the ceiling then asked me, “Are you an ambitious man, Mr. Dafoe?”

  I was silent for a few seconds and decided to play it straight down the line.

  “If you mean do I want to get rich, then the answer is yes.”

  He quietly laughed to himself and said, “I was the same way once. When Alice Wilson told me she was pregnant, I saw it all slipping away.”

  He looked at me for a moment, and I just sat there and waited him out. He looked back at his drink and continued.

  “It was 1954. I was sole heir to the family fortune and determined to make my mark on the world. My wife and I had always maintained an uneasy co-existence after the first few years of our marriage. Divorce wasn't a real option back then. Alice was there, was pretty and, well, I was a man who took what he wanted. So I took Alice.”

  He took a sip of his scotch.

  “When Alice came to me with the news she was pregnant, I demanded she get an abortion. Last thing I needed—or wanted, was a colored daughter. It would have ruined me. But Alice went to church and wasn't about to kill her baby. I screamed, I threatened. She got scared but held her ground. Finally, she agreed to let me send her away while she had the child. I made her swear on the life of her child, on the Bible, that she would never tell anyone I was the father. In turn, as long as she kept silent, every year she would get money to help her and the child out.”

  I said, “I take it Alice kept her end of the bargain.”

  I saw a look of pain on his face.

  “She did, at least until she was dying. Before she passed, she told Samantha the truth. A week after she was buried, Samantha showed up at my door—no big deal, I've lived alone since my wife died eight years ago, we had no children...”

  He seemed to drift off, then shook his head and continued talking.

  “Anyway, Samantha told me she knew about me and her mother and demanded money for her silence. I took the easy way out just to keep the peace.”

  He stopped, lit a cigarette, took another sip of scotch.

  “Three weeks ago, she came to me, told me she was pregnant and who the father was. I told her that I would make sure she and the child were well taken care of if she moved to another state. I wanted my grandchild to have a chance to grow up white.”

  He paused to gulp down the rest of his scotch. He put out his cigarette, took a deep breath.

  “Last time I spoke to her, she said she was going to do as I asked, but first she had to say goodbye to Sarah Laumer. I asked her why and she told me Sarah was her closest friend—everyone in town knew Sarah leaned ‘lavender’, so I immediately understood the nature of the relationship. I told Samantha to call me when she was ready to leave—I was already making arrangements for her and the child to start a new life in Seattle. They found her body in a ditch two days later. I was furious. When I went to the station to volunteer to be Watkins' lawyer, I was just fishing to see if he was guilty. I knew he wasn't the killer after talking to him for fifteen minutes. That's when I went to see Sarah. She was drunk when she opened the door. She looked at me, and I saw the guilt in her eyes. She slammed the door shut. That's when I sent for you.”

  “You bastard,” I hissed. “You could have gotten me killed.”

  “Oh, I doubt it Mr. Dafoe. Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that people generally kill over one of three reasons. They kill because they are greedy, because they hate, or because they love too hard. Money wasn't an issue and Sarah Laumer neither hated nor loved you. I knew in my gut, she wouldn't kill a stranger. Me, maybe, but never you. Deep down, Sarah Laumer was a decent person who let her...her love for my daughter overwhelm her.”

  He looked at me for few seconds then pulled an envelope from his inner suit pocket.

  “This will make it more than worth your while and assure your silence.” He handed me the envelope.

  I took it and pulled out the check and read how much it was made out for.

  I shook my head and softly laughed, “Yeah. You read me right. That's for sure. Deal.”

  I put the envelope in my pocket.

  “You're the only man who knows about this, so tell me, do you think God will forgive me?”

  The question startled me. I wasn't expecting it.

  I looked at him sharply. I peered into his weary, yellowish eyes and realized why they didn't match the rest of him.

  “You're dying.”

  He nodded. “Got the news five weeks ago. That's why I was so upset over Samantha's death. I felt God had given me a chance to make things right before I go, only to have it stolen from me.”

  He stared at me—as if I could bestow absolution. I couldn't offer him anything. I just got up and left.

  I read his obituary in the paper four months later. He left no survivors.

  The End

  If you enjoyed this, you will love my novel.

  Scrambled Hard-Boiled

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QCMG30

  Caveman

  I woke up with my skin exploding.

  I shot up out of my bed and as soon as my feet hit the floor, the burning itch ceased.

  The alarm had already switched back to a simple audio beep instead of telling my in-link to spam my skin nerves. Thinking the time, I realized I had overslept fifteen minutes. No wonder my implants zapped me.

  Too much vodka last night. Stumbling to the bathroom to take a piss, I tasted my tongue and got nauseous from its rough texture. Leaning over the sink and slapping out a shot of water into a paper cup, I drank it and did it again…and again.

  Too much, too fast. I leaned over the crapper and gave it all back to the moon.

  Shaking from the effort, with my throat aflame with stomach bile, I got some more water and drank it…this time slowly.

  My head throbbed. Thrusting my hand into the med-slot next to the sink, I felt the
prick of the needles on my palm, rapidly followed by the cool spray of heal-skin over the area where my blood had been sampled. The light went green above the slot, and I took out my hand. A few seconds later, a fix-it pad was spat out. I slapped it on my thigh and looked at myself in the mirror.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  Bloodshot eyes with bags, pasty skin, thinning mousy brown hair, cut short. A few centimeters shy of two meters in height and a body that had been missing regular workouts lately. Going soft.

  Like I said, it wasn’t pretty, but it was pretty much normal.

  I got in the shower cube, spread-eagled and thought it on. The cleanjuice hit me and as soon as it started it was over, and I was blown-dry.

  After slipping on my coveralls, I went into my kitchen nook, heated up a cup of tea and grabbed a food bar. In five minutes, I was done, and it was time to go to work.

  By the door hung my gun and holster. I strapped it on and started to open the door, but paused.

  The fix-it pad had helped me feel human, but something still wasn’t right. I looked over at my kitchen nook, gave in and went over and opened a drawer, took out the vodka container, flipped open the top and took a couple of swigs.

  Man had been abusing alcohol since the dawn of time, and he still hadn’t found a cure for a hangover. Time was the only remedy and the best you could do was to put it off until you had the time to deal with the uncomfortable healing process. Hair of the dog.

  That’s what I told myself…for about the fourth day in a row.

  I took the tube to work. Inside the cramped car was a mixture of all types. Some were obvious techies, miners, electricians and the like. A few were junior engineers or lower management, while the rest were non-descript worker bees. A smattering of kids was thrown in for good measure. All—men, women and children—wore coveralls. Most of the adults wore blue, green or regolith gray. Some of the kids had some stripes or colors woven into their jumpers.

  As the tube sped on, I hung onto a strap and just looked at my feet. Some of the kids were openly staring at my gun hanging underneath my armpit; others noticed the neon orange stripes that were on my sleeves. All left me alone.

  Caveman.

  The tube came to my stop, and I got out, went up the escalator and exited the station into Company Square.

  The Vegas sky had already taken on a bright blue, giving the illusion (or so we’ve been told) of a sunny day on Earth. A large pillar shot up from the center of the square, and pedestrians were walking or rolling to and fro. Buildings, reaching up near the roof of the cave, encircled the pillar.

  I walked into the one that had Lunar Mines chiseled above the entrance, took the lift up to the eighth floor and went into the office marked Cavern Security. I had only taken a few steps into the room when a voice called out to me.

  “Andropov! You’re late.”

  I looked over at the source of the voice, Captain Ling.

  “Shut up, Harvey. This isn’t my best morning, Ok?”

  He gave me the once over with eyes and shrugged his shoulders. He was my boss, but also a friend. I had known him for years. He was already a Sergeant when I joined the Cavemen.

  Cavemen…Cavern Security.

  When the first lunar colonies finally were established in the late 21st Century, it soon became apparent that domes on the surface weren't viable. While cheap, domes were too damn fragile. The famous collapse of 2098 was triggered by a small cluster of micrometeorites that riddled one of the main European Union’s colonies. Two-thirds of settlement (over a thousand people) perished before integrity was re-established.

  The Yanks didn’t wait for this to happen to them and took action. They moved their colony underground. The Europeans and the Chinese quickly followed suit.

  Then, as industry expanded, so did the tunneling. Mindful of the necessity to enforce safety standards in order not to suffer another catastrophic blowout like in ’98, all three major lunar powers started up their own tunnel inspection teams.

  After the Plague War of 2319, most of humanity was wiped out on Earth. It took the ruthless isolation and extermination of any infected (or possibly exposed) settlers to enable the three colonies able to avoid Earth’s fate.

  It’s been two hundred years since the war, and we are still waiting for the cure to the bio-plagues on Earth. Management says they’re working on it. I personally don’t give a damn—but in all honesty—I feel that way about most things.

  Humbled by the travesty that occurred on the mother world, the three colonies put aside most differences and administratively united in 2322. The three tunnel inspection teams merged, and Cavern Security was born. With a couple of years, it had evolved into the general public security system, and Cavern Security was now the de-facto police, for better or worse. The Americans started calling members of Cavern Security “Cavemen", and the name stuck.

  I’d joined the team at nineteen. I wasn’t all that hot academically, certainly not engineer material, much less management or scientist. It was going to be worker bee status for me. I had an ego back then, and couldn’t bear being a face in the crowd. Being young, strong and mean, I applied for and was accepted as an apprentice Caveman. My family was ashamed of me, my friends (the few I had, anyway) deserted me, but I didn’t care and within a year I had earned my first stripe, was wired with implants and armed.

  I never looked back. That had been seventeen years ago.